The Gap Century

Essays on experiencing America's 20th century as a gap year by 100, and the funneling of that century down a box canyon for pillage and destruction, and down a dark alley for mugging, all effected by the US' own Congress and, perhaps, the ever ghosts of the Founding Fathers marking its time as ever intended. History blindly taped and recorded the political slaughter for posterity, smiling too mildly, too weak to any longer fight a decrepit, rotted third leg, legislative branch, Congress, its creation, turned over by the decadent media that serviced the marauding.

College students in some nations in the world are given, or instructed to take, a “gap year” to remove
themselves from interminable academia, in order to exercise their vitality to grow in experience of the vagaries of the external world.It is to bring
questioning skill and discretion into their further academic endeavors.They are
encouraged to especially accommodate themselves into other cultures wherein to reflect and grow in nuanced thinking.But the 20th century reveals itself a gap century, a time-out from progress.At the end of it, the exploitation of America’s positivism and vibrancy revealed a nation long declining into despair, and even gross
hopelessness.The observer drinks morning coffee, and travels backward over a
visual landscape that became an insult to the faith and hope of the dawn of the Industrial Age, seeing Americans’ physical endeavors through the century in the construct of cities, brick and mortar
architectural achievements of majesty, depth, and beauty, representing self-respect and presence; their bridges, roads, and energy providing works projects, achievements in the early
20thcentury, and their hoped for achievements then in collapse.We find the propagandized modern generations have broken them asunder, which they always do when generations are convinced
they are left out.Power brokers through the media are quick to claim this
destruction is caused by external agitators, "...nothing to see her folks, move along," but it is not.

The 20th century promised industrial achievement.Had the US progressed with no political chicanery, it might be light years advanced in standard of life, and in actually expressing the principles and values the US has always claimed for
itself.By politics and power machinations the US is almost destroyed in the early
21stcentury.Prolonged polarized dances between two major political parties, in continuous frenetic gyration, welled into a dismissive attitude toward its own population, whose wealth,
culture and potential have either been pillaged through chicaneous legislation, or negated in effectiveness by that same body.Without public engagement that is non-partisan, the US may not retrieve any of its original potential.In the latter half of the 20thcentury, the US weakened markedly, especially in failure to approve direct legislation for its own best interests in the face of unpopular expressions of military might,
celebrated through imperialism.Common sense pushes to alter course but the military’s engagements rage on, even viewing the US at
post-midnight.Most do understand, but many are too young, and undereducated to
know, the history of the country, given our reduced educational system, or comprehend how we came to this loss.Many seem in disbelief as to how it came to this.

The 20th century population ended with no effective rights to depend on, this accomplished while people were told they had more freedom than
ever.The communities designated, or self-designated “colored” did achieve practical civil standing by mid century.In many ways it has transcended racial profiling.

As humans were surreptitiously depleted of their ability to prosper, the land and other species have been
reduced in their richness, though still other species have been raised in respect.One of the few progresses made in the 20thcentury has been in the development of empathy and sensitivity
toward other sentient creatures and in raising the standard of life for companion animals.People attempting to evolve in spirit understand that animals open human emotions.

From Industrialists at the beginning of the century to Elitists a hundred years later, the power brokers, for
example, wrested control of one-third of the US Government ­ the legislative branch, Congress.They pursued it all, that is to control the Western hemisphere and Europe, finding ever more ways at pushing their long bony fingers into the wealth and protective laws of the
people and country, and wresting them away, especially through banking and taxation maneuvers; and not just in the US, but upon those upon whom they forced their influence, as countries adopted a
capitalist democracy model.Legislators sold their favors for various financial
supports to gain committee posts, to run successfully for re-election, and to gain other long-term advantages.In only the rarest of circumstances did independent candidates gain entry into Congress through the century.Voters were encouraged to vote shortsightedly, and continue supporting partisan politics.Duplicitous means were employed by the parties to keep out of the voting ranks those perceived to be change
agents.Party political warfare, publicly exacerbated by media personalities and a
power press, proffered babble in an endless variety of hues to set up stage quarrels that distracted at election time.Backstage, our value system was consensually raided.Have you ever observed two horses in a corral fight?Fear and pain produces physical damage.Something in the conditions in the
corral, if alleviated, would most likely end the quarrel.Another model produced
moral decay and decadence, with freedom of speech and expression used to justify for public profit the express use of profanity, vulgarity, obscenity, nudity, pornography and perversion, making
what should be intimate expression, a public license for profit-taking, underscoring the progression of uncurbed democratic capitalism.

The western nations have been destroyed by politics more so than by business and war.Nations of Africa were decimated repeatedly, even as they struggled to rise in this downhill
century, being pillaged by sponsoring larger nations, which brought development deals to the table to gain the raw wealth of those nations thereby buying the country without a shot on its own
soil.

The 20th Century’s polarizing influence, even using pleas for “peace” when the world was at peace, masked its provocation toward wars, especially as more and
more cultures resisted, turning their backs and claiming ownership in peace.This
could have been a period of mild public partisan difference and economic prosperity, but it was orchestrated into war mongering to the devolvement of the health of the populations of powerful
nations, gullibly claiming advancement for itself, then complaining about the residue of broken culture.Complicit in it was “the Press,” in the early days described as “muck-rakers” and practitioners of “yellow journalism,” at the end transformed into an influencing and
infiltrating giant called “the Media,” “embedded” into Elitist governments.This
giant, broadly named, is televised computerized communications technology joined to traditional politically active newspapers, sold as entertainment, but used to propagandize populations into at
least public confusion, leaving them slow to realize how they had been systematically undermined.They were being processed through economic enslavement, unable to prosper for the most part, to a form of enslavement spread throughout the industrialized, and partially
industrialized, world via select propaganda directed toward various power cultures.

Well, thank you Benjamin Franklin and other founding fathers.The first cycle of your created government has almost concluded and circle doesn’t
square.The crank critics you may remember so well are present in dissent and the
experiment descends further, and has much to complain to you about.It would
appear now, with your freemason-style fractal progressions, that you didn’t think the U.S. would last much beyond 248 years, at least it appears built into your blueprint given the systematic
crumbling and dissolution of physical governmental infrastructures over the latter half of the last century.Demoralization has arrived on schedule anyway.Don’t bow yet!The U.S. was designed by the terms of its birth to be a nation
of free persons, pursuing a privilege to live individually, congregate as it chose, when it chose, and to pursue peace and prosperity; or that’s what Americans thought.But evidently the design was really that the people would come to be controlled through too benign
appearing legislative forces day-to-day via Congressional compromise, which would,endlessly, work against all sides and funnel federal money to a few.When
complained over, the response of government would be nothing short of passivity and somnambulism, until, furtively, the most powerful did wrest control of the nation’s influence and direction in
surreptitious ways to further their private profit so that it was clear to all.The U.S., and its Congress, received its due; it was plantationized.There was
enough land and other free space in the beginning to carry most, in an agrarian life style, forward to the end of the 19thcentury.Who understood better the industrial promise ahead
than you, eh, Franklin?Your blueprint or chart has succeeded beyond your wildest
dreams; come back down that gangplank, and listen to me.If the populace could
dine with you today, and query you over all of this, what would you say?

Can we point to our advancements in the 20thcentury with amazement?Aghastment is more to the point.We are aghast as to what we
have witnessed.Man’s autonomy and control over his circumstances has been brought
down.America’s non-rich, working society, which once had some discretionary
control over its income and daily life, has been minimalized, and propagatedinto
lives of “Volunteerism,” while any universal welfare programs, formerly earned as our due, denigrated and directed to the dung heap.Corporations, reporting on their eternal profits, then take credit in their business accountings for the successful volunteer efforts of
their employees on their own time, transferring their labor on the balance sheets into money riches for themselves.What kind of individual advancement is this?

I know…I know…our capitalism, generosity and humanity is the envy of the world.We take care of our own - not.Winter soldiers whose health was destroyed in their three or more committed years campaign in the Revolution had to then struggle for years
to obtain their promised land bounty in the open west, and other benefits, but eventually they received it.In the 20thcentury, began systematic neglect of veterans, who often abused
medications, devolved in despair, and became homeless, destitute of attention in a compassionate way or genuine health care.

We might have faithfully pursued science per your Age of Reason. We might have learned of the inner earth, and outer space.If
we did, that data has been secreted from the bulk of the citizenry, hidden, as it were, deep in the under earth of national subconscious.We might be living at almost no cost per capita, with the ecological necessity of wilderness in our North American environment retained with
integrity.We might have been long-sighted and self-supporting enough to oversee
with justice for all, a nation of worth and health, centered in respect for and use of ancient knowledge, which, anyway, does represent your religion as a Diest, Franklin.Ancient wisdom always sustained in those under-developed geographical populations farthest from us,
and hangs on still to survive even as the modern world awakens to the extent of our pointed neglect.Our lawmakers employed legal pillaging against our best interests.We might be living in a value system, which incorporates contemplation, meditation, and spiritual understanding but churches and other places of worship have been politicized for capitalistic
purposes as well.Much that was raised as public issue in America was then oft
legislated against in practical cases; Congress has become the enemy.Congress,
bought and paid for, is an apologist expression for special interests, lobbyists, and you know, those in whose work you were employed and we thought sympathetic, in your individualistic way,
Franklin.

By according slavery a continued place, by voicing for compromise, you drew the architectural graph and trend lines through
which our legislative body would course.The living document that was to be
America transcended into mush in the declining 20thcentury, which you must have seen would happen, experienced
in how governments progress as you were.Indeed, you split for the Continent and
France for eight to nine years as soon as independence was declared.Why?

Congress, the legislative body of the US, as citizens have experienced it, seems to the naked eye, not to
function agreeably or effectively anymore.Is that the reason you fled post haste
to France?Was espousing governmental structural ideas you knew could not work, to
those who revered you, one of the reasons that your wife ceased to live with, or talk to you?

I know you are not readily available to answer; that is the point.

The old parlor question arises; being, if one could so do, what individual from history might one choose to
dine with?Upon experience, a sense of responsibility, and thought, I think it
might have to be you, Franklin, and I think you have some answering to do.The
20thCentury was visually and audibly documented.We can back up in our mind’s eye, and see and hear ourselves through it right along.We can study our pursuits then, and misgivings.

The principle development in the Western World that offers actual help to man now is DNA
science.What the Eastern world retained in its archives as to the nature of the
universe in ancient records and language, is alive for us all now.Through
scientific advancement, yes, the people of the West now understand the purpose of that which many considered occult and myth.Evidently, the palm readers long ago, were scientific interpreters, diagnosing one’s metamorphosing DNA reflected in the lines of one’s hands
- one’s experiences becoming encoded into one’s DNA right along, and exuding from beneath the surface of the skin into the universe.At the beginning of the last century such interpretation was cause for arrest and punishment.Readers of the influences expressing through the body, through its dynamic constant change, through the coursing of DNA
flooding through one’s blood stream, was originally treated as scam entertainment or fraud.Police were enlisted to silence the interpreters who with logic, reason and ancient home truths, could interpret where anyone’s subconscious motivations was leading one.Ancient scientific knowledge brought from the East now has station in the West much to the
consternation of offices of Western religion.

thcentury continues to be proffered as the best the US can achieve, while Congress and those who control in Western cultures, prefer military and spy systems to continue to find
ways to enslave other populations.

To give Americans their due, second to civil rights legislation that was blackmailed into existence, perhaps
our major advancement in the 20thcentury was improved insulation in housing.We can live hovel-like or better without freezing.Candle-lit courthouses are not now mysteriously burning even with our legal records inside, as they once
did.That doesn’t seem to matter now though.For heat and fuel expense is re-captured and multiplied into non-sustainable costs for electricity
for which we are billed, even with solar power, fuel, and other taxation avenues available.Our water is undrinkable, our soil, unplantable, our food, inedible - filled with toxic poisons, our seeds unsaveable, laws require them to be manufactured, then to regress and
self-destruct, and our air, non-breatheable.

The course for the next century is clearly to chart a new course back to the 19thcentury, and to own small lots on which to subsistence farm.We did not flow forward in the Industrial age, and it seems we must, to quote you, Franklin, “…most assuredly hang,” and turn
backward.

th century
populationtraveled by train, cycles, hot air balloons and other inventive means, and Buddhist monks could fly then too.In the US, it followed that for the many, regulations were signed into law to curb individuals from
developing and manufacturing their inventions of relief to improve life for society.Elitists could, when possible, take control of others’ inventive products, and potentials, and either profit by their own development of them, or, as often the case, just sit on
them.Literacy had once been expected and pretty much demanded, perhaps more so
than education itself - that’s gone!No respect for it in the destruction of
public education.If you could read, you could proceed.In the weakening of our values toward same; saving money and time received
emphasis.Industrial values were impressed on the human life
experience.It has been written that capitalism is the natural product of
Puritanism.Puritanism prevailed in that way.Most every American high school student in the 20thcentury was required to read the Puritan literary patent,The Scarlet Letter, for example - the theme, adulterizing.In the West of the US,
political propaganda transformed money through the 20thcentury into reverence for
“capitalism”.A means that filled a purported empty space, or so it appeared to an increasingly myopic Congress.

With every potential step forward toward a national security, which society realized it was losing, our own
government raised barriers and pushed the people over in galumphing backward somersaults.By the end of the century, many realized, Fascism was transparently at play, like mold taking over our government base.Through regulation, public congregation for freewheeling barter and trade was threatened, and select groups targeted for death by government
be it through police, health care providers, reduced public aid or failure to repair broken public systems.Laughter died.Hope and effort, once lauded, were
exchanged for violence, decadence, and demeaning vulgarity.So, too, went story
and song, some, in the name of education.Youth was allowed to figure out a
religion for itself, and to believe, or not, on its own, wherever it might take the unknowing.Take that self-respect.

thcentury was the greatest of centuries and the best possible time to be alive didn’t seem right from the end of the 1960s on, and revealed itself ultimately a snow job by the end
of the century.

Did the century celebrate freedom and rights and a movement forward for Women and Children?It seems so to an extent for women, as far as opportunities in a capitalistic democracy
go.Insidiously, the intention of the power brokers, while they were selling out
industry, for its replacement, computer driven technology and automation, revealed itself in turning children in the classroom into objects for perverted experimentation.We don’t have to ask where the Nazis went after the outdoor fighting ended in WWII, a war that is
only now winding down.That should bring clarity as to how there could have ever been a 100 years war
in Europe ­ politics!Women did gain much easier support and encouragement in
higher education, and have opportunity for public achievement, for capitalism does want all individuals working.Women, as ever, can be manipulated through their myriads of nuances, to work against themselves.Women tend to compromise.Countering women’s upward climb was the propaganda that she was working against her interests in motherhood, marriage stability, suffering ever-increasing appeals to vanity via fashion and
appearance.

School teaching was recoded to limit learning and teach to testing, in order to produce a slave worker who
could be managed through curbing his acumen.The 20thcentury was set by secret government pacts during the Bolshevik days to transmorph into a Russian soviet model socialist system by
the next century’s early years.In America such direction blended efficiently, in
an unhappy way,within the country’s own inclination toward Puritan utilitarianism
- the single perfect pearl, or rose, or whatever.A confident, dulcet-toned
public, as well?Forget it; especially the confidence part; it’s not necessary to
encourage automatons it was discovered.Animals speak; we try to learn their
language, for that is now our avenue to emotional expression, building on the relationship with them we have fallen back on.The 20thcentury did, indeed, raise empathy, at a
price.

Elders are targeted for starvation and dehydration under government health directives.Secret government spying pervades.Ben, did you contribute to building that into the design of Congress, or just see it coming, under your blue print of how the branches of
government would work?You chaired enough committees in your own time to
understand men very well.Did you really know that this top judicial branch,
judgeship for life ­ the Supreme Court ­ would become problematical as influencers would use it for political mischief making?Are you and your friends to blame for all of this?Where else would logic and reason take us, as we really did not plan to forfeit ourselves and our rights as has been done to us?

One cannot treat too lightly how you and other founding brothers split right after you all set up this
experiment, for parts across the seas, or far flung plantations, where continued acquisition of massive amounts of land in the west in some cases suggested you were setting up your own region
states, and ultimately, perhaps, founding countries powerfully rich against which you or your descendants would press the US for advantage.This could produce hysterical defensiveness ­ that has long been a ploy used by the government to manage its own.You knew the ins and outs of the written word by which to set up the dynamic operations of the
national government over on the Eastern seaboard.No wonder so many fought for
their own state’s rights; maybe they’d been observing you.Everyone raced to stop
everyone else from getting so much that any could become a demagogue, an enslaver against other populations.This was a government designed to protect none but allow enough of an open door for those who pushed to gain more for themselves.The US federal government evidently was set up as a pillager; it has certainly become
so.Right in front of you, you had another model used to effect against the vast
American Iroquois and Algonquin tribes and subcomponents in the taking of their autonomy and even subsistence.You knew how to weaken the peaceful man, like the peaceful American Indian, with the power of gunpowder to lift them into your view.As to William Penn and how the American Indians were tricked of so much of their own place, and the
habitual laying on by one or more Quakers against another, is that the abstract of how a Penn Stater plots for expansion of power?Anyway, our gap century has a cultivated view of the downhill slide.We are now engaged in a great civil war…etc.

Your group knew there would be enough water and land to extend us through the 19thcentury; even as some or most of you seem to have been plotting to take the great Sonoran Desert to the southwest; that appears the
logic.“Enslavement” is the key, and was really built into this American
experiment construct.Under enslavement, the founding fathers knew through
attrition the people would lose muscle for resistance.

thcentury broke many of the less powerful through unkept promises and its own ill gotten personal gains.Subservience seems to have been intended, and continues, as we prepare for the end of an astronomical cycle, which you reportedly foresaw.Not always directly taking from the people, as the impatient might, the 20thcentury governments utilized propaganda to justify forfeiture of self-sustaining power.Government representatives who were weakened through compromise and resistance, rewarding passivity and compromise through its
own drugged state.One wonders sometimes if legislators receive pharmaceutical
samples as do doctors.

th
centuryto mush!The necessity for a promising future was dismissed by Congress.Mush is
not music you can dance to.Brilliant how the fault for this was put all on the
people.We accepted development of nuclear power for awhile, but the rest of the
world ultimately turned from it, frightened countries hold onto it; we do.In this
dog-eat-dog world we have run out of dogs.Much of this design of the
20thCentury came from the model of “male privilege” as well, Franklin.How do we retreat, rescind, reconsider, and restructure a government transparent now in its course
to have not served it own humanity’s need for sustainment?